The One About the Food and the City.

(These next two are from yesterday/last night.)

Tribute to Thanksgiving #5: "To keep the body in good health is a duty, otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear." - Buddha

I am so disgusted with myself lately. While I have maintained my weight by some miracle, I feel unwell. I feel gross. I feel fat and heavy. I feel exhausted, unhealthy, unbalanced, and bloated.

For the past little while, I haven't been watching what I'm eating. It's been whatever I feel like. It's been easy to just eat those potato chips, those cupcakes, that candy bar, that combo meal. For a while, it didn't matter because I wasn't suffering from what I'm feeling now... but it has definitely caught up with me. My body needs a serious purge.

So, what am I thankful for? The ability to know what's good for me. 

I literally came home from rehearsal tonight, pulled out a trash bag and dumped all of my unhealthy food into it. (Don't worry, the unused stuff isn't going in the dumpster. I'll be taking that to the Utah Food Bank.) I went to the grocery store and bought the things I know my body will appreciate, the things I know I can eat and feel good about.

I am grateful for the body I have in its generally healthy state. I am grateful that I have control of what I partake of each day. I am grateful that, starting tomorrow morning, I start over the way that I know how.

Tribute to Thanksgiving #6: "I was in love with New York. I do not mean 'love' in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and never love anyone quite that way again." - Joan Didion

After the scare and the destruction Hurricane Sandy, I feel this is more than appropriate to be thankful for. My favorite city: NYC.

The One with the Shopping and the Singing.

So... yesterday literally held no time for me to sit down and write. I'm taking my break after work and before rehearsal today to do numbers 3 and 4. I'll do 5 and 6 tonight when I get home from rehearsal.

Tribute to Thanksgiving #3: "The quickest way to know a woman is to go shopping with her." - Marcelene Cox

I am not a crazy shopper. I hardly ever spend more than $30 on any article of clothing, shoes, etc. I consider myself a great bargain shopper, but I don't really call it a "de-stresser" or anything like that. Unless we're talking about shopping for other people.

With the Christmas season approaching, I am scouring stores in person and online for the perfect gifts for my perfect friends and family. Black Friday? I'm in Heaven.

I don't know where it became such a fascination to me, but I absolutely love finding gifts for loved ones for birthdays and the holiday season. It's just very important to me and always has been.

I suppose I'm about a third of the way done. I still have a long way to go, and I love that!

Tribute to Thanksgiving #4: "We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it." - George Eliot

I'm sitting in my room right now listening to my roommate give voice lessons to a little girl in our living room. The little girl is probably eleven years old and has the most extreme vibrato. I smile about it because, at that age, so did I. And then I'm reminded of a video Martha and I stumbled across a while ago.

A little background: my mom got her bachelor's degree at BYU in Music/French Horn performance. She has always been an excellent musician and made it an important part of her children's lives, too. I absolutely accredit my abilities to the early start that she gave us. Rather frequently, as a family, we would assemble in our living room and stand around the piano and sing while my mom played. It is one of my fondest memories, the one I can recall the best. I loved it. This video is one of those moments (sans Mom playing the piano, of course):

Today I am grateful for this. I think about it often. I smile about it often. And if I ever have kids of my own, I can't wait to share this with them, too.

The One with the Tributes 2012.

This time last year, I was working in an office in Ogden, just finishing up my degree at Weber State University. This time last year, I was participating in A Christmas Carol for the first time. This time last year, I was living with my sister, playing with her pit bull, and perhaps paying far too much money to live in a bit of a dump.

This year, I am working as a hotel clerk in Salt Lake. I hold a bachelor's degree. This year, I am a rehearsing for A Christmas Carol again, playing a completely different role than last year. This year, I'm living with three close friends and paying a lesser amount for a nicer place.

This year, I haven't blogged as much as I wanted to. But I told myself that, regardless of that fact, there was one thing that I did last year that I would absolutely repeat this year when November approached us: my Tributes to Thanksgiving.

For those of you who weren't with me last year, this was a little project I took on (like so many other people during this time of year) where I challenged myself to blog once a day about something in my life that I am thankful for. It ended up being, as I expected it would, a great experience with humbling, pivotal, silly, candid, and difficult moments. It was a great way to remind myself of the many blessings that I do have and an excellent way to forget about what I don't have.

As was the case last year, I am starting a little late. It's November 4th, so these next two days or so will be doubled up on Tributes. I will admit that this go-around will be much more difficult than last year since I don't spend my time at a computer in an office anymore. I feel a little funky right now after having only slept about three hours last night. Forgive me if this entry seems choppy!

Tribute to Thanksgiving #1:  "The one thing that matters is the effort." - Antoine de Sainte-Exupery

Obviously when you take something that you are having negative feelings about and choose to put a positive spin on it, it's likely that those negative feelings will begin to dissipate, even if it's just a little. This is my hope with this Tribute, as the past three weeks have been especially taxing.

Today, I am thankful for my job. 

The truth is, it's not easy. I spend almost the entire eight hours on my feet and dealing with people I would sometimes rather punch in the face than offer my help to. I am blamed and apologize for things I have no control over. I get yelled at, cried to, laughed at. Upon first glance, working at a hotel seems like a relatively cushy job where you get to spend your time sitting around and merely checking in and checking out guests. Not the case, folks.

Now, let's talk about why I'm thankful for it. It is a good job that allows me to have my evenings open to rehearse and/or perform. It has taught me amazing discipline. It has taught me more patience. But above all, it has reminded me how to treat people.

I will never walk into a hotel, into an airport, into a restaurant, into a salon, theatre,  library, etc. without making eye contact with the person tending to customers/patrons. I have found that the mere glance and smile from a guest can truly brighten my day. I choose to be the person who the employees remember because of how pleasant I was, not how crabby or how hateful or impatient. I have grown to respect those in the service industry so much in the past eleven months of working at the hotel. The job isn't easy. But smiling is.

Tribute to Thanksgiving #2: "A baby is a little bit of heaven on earth." - Author unknown

This really needs no words.